Silver Screen Father Failure

So starts American Beauty, the 1999 Academy Award winner of Best Picture. This cry for a true father figure opens the door for a whole universe of needs and expectations of a father that Jane, the daughter, yearns for. American Beauty, being a popular film, stands out among many movies and brings into focus the many fallacies of a patriarch. Unfulfilling of the National Fatherhood Initiative’s (NFI) hopes of a productive, loving, and fatherly man, Lester Burnham is the antithesis of a competent dad.

Using the scale that the NFI, a leader in establishing a fatherly model, applies to judge a father’s ability to have a positive impact on his children’s lives, Lester Burnham, played by Kevin Spacey, falls well short of being an able dad. The scale, which is completely subjective, is made up of five criteria. Dad’s are critiqued on involvement in their children’s lives, engagement, guidance that they show, competence, and priorities. Each category is graded on a scale from

The last of NFI’s standards for a fit father is how his priorities stand up to NFI’s values. According to fatherhood.org, NFI’s official website, priority is defined as:

This statement speaks volumes about the troubled relationship that Jane and Lester share. Lester spends little if any time with Jane in American Beauty, thus emphasizing that his priorities towards family life are, for the most part, nonexistent. If Lester’s patriarchal priorities were to be assigned a numerical figure, 0.5 would be his score.

Webster, Incorporated. 11 Sept. 2003

Some topics in this essay:
Lester Burnham, Annette Bening, Furthermore Lester, Jane NFI’s, American Beauty, Kevin Spacey, Beauty Lester, Father Failure, Academy Award, Angela Lester’s, american beauty, lester burnham, sept 2003, american beauty lester, beauty lester, children’s lives, 11 sept, nfi’s scale, jane follow, national fatherhood, 11 sept 2003,